My grandmother — still going at 101, bless her — gave me this cassette for Christmas sometime in the 1990s.
I can't say I was particularly overjoyed at the gift. I saw a performance of African Sanctus in our school chapel in the late 1970s. David Fanshawe was there: I think he gave a talk before the performance, and then he came and sat on the pew right next to me. I can't remember quite what it was about him, but I remember being suspicious from the off. I'm sure he was wearing the ubiquitous cap you can still see see on his website; and I have a feeling he was in khaki brown and (can this be true? surely not in the chapel?) was wearing shorts. The whole aura was one of a colonialist appropriation of African tropes, constrained and sanitised within European traditions (years ahead of Paul Simon, then). Fanshawe has presumably done well out of the work, since, thirty years on, he's still running a dedicated website for it (available for guest appearances and talks with slides), and it seems to be the work that always gets mentioned in his biographies. Now, let's listen to it again.
Well, it's like Jesus Christ Superstar meets Orff's Carmina Burana (another piece of music that school thrust at us, hoping to capture our interest with a form of 'classical' music that was a bit raucous occasionally — you know, just like rock music — but we saw through them every time). The interesting bits are those on tape, and it would be interesting to hear them without Fanshawe's messing about and all that Latin.
(The author acknowledges that some bitterness about his schooling remains, and may have coloured his judgement in listening to this album. Notwithstanding that, his comments may be entirely justified and accurate. They in no way reflect on his grandmother, who, it is certain, intended well.)
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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